My friend Kristin came out to see the horses - she takes lessons during the winter but stops during the summer, so she was missing her "horsey time". She ended up riding Lacey and I was SO impressed with Miss L!!
Kristin, while not overly large, is about my height (5'9") and probably weighs 50ish more pounds than me (I weigh 135 on a skinny day). Lacey sometimes acts like I'm on the too big side of things for her so I was a little concerned about letting K ride, just because I didn't want Lacey acting up/getting "broken". I figure, she's 27, afterall, she has the right to have a weight limit.
But, Lacey didn't seem to mind at all! It was obviously a workout for her to carry that much (got sweaty after only about 10 minutes of walking) but I'm the "heaviest" person to ride her in years so she's really not accustomed to heavier riders. She did really well though. No balking, just plodding along.
I feel like Kristin's expertise helped a lot, she knows how to sit well on a horse so she wasn't riding like a sack of potatoes.

Anyway, that was great. Kristin really enjoyed herself. :)

Then, later, the lady associated with Lady's rescue org was supposed to come out but she called me when she was supposed arrive to let me know that they were on standby for a large horse seizure (apparently 7 mares, 3 babies, one baby that had to be immediatly put down... :( ) so she wasn't able to make it out after all. Laaaaame. She said she was going to make a point of coming out tomorrow, hopefully she does. I like just being on my own with the horses, but since Lady is not mine, I'd really prefer that "her" people were more involved with her...you know?

Tomorrow it's supposed to be like a bazillion degrees. Not looking forward to that. On the forecast, where it usually has a sun with a little cloud, there's a sun+rising heat waves+a cactus. It's supposed to get up to 97+* [around here, 87* is like murder hot, hahahah]...fuuunnnnnn. Hopefully Lacey drinks enough water. She's usually pretty intelligent about that but her own body is doing the worst job at cooling/heating herself these days... I'm going to put some water down in the shed tomorrow, early in the morning, so they don't have to walk so far to get water... I had been meaning to put water down there anyway so it needs to happen.

Then, this evening, during/after feeding time, it was apparently "artsy" photo time. I'm still using my screen-less camera so I had no idea they came out at these angles until I uploaded them on to my laptop.

And of course, I'm not going to tell you about pictures without sharing. Do not panic. ;)

So this one makes Lacey look dead/in a museum...She is alive and in her pasture, do not panic.

Lacey looks so cool! Also, her eye, my hair? Ridic.

Cute ear!

I should probably get one of those GIANT coffee table artsy picture books published of Lacey... That'd be ideal.

Haha thanks Tiny! I really like that one too.
I'm not particularly sure how it came out that well. I just saw how the light was hitting Lacey, stuck my head in there, hoped for the best, and took a picture. I was really surprised when I got it uploaded and discovered how exactly perfect the lighting had been!
I did go in with the hope of getting some sort of Lacey+me backlit shot but hoping is one thing, actually getting it is another.

Nothing yet. :( However, apparently the vet got their ultrasound back/fixed/new one, whatever, today so we should know soon. I think the lady with the rescue is hoping to come out first (she works for the vet the rescue uses), possibly in case she can definitively say that's a preggo, or lego (good one!) belly and not have to pay $$ to the vet <--I'm not sure if that's her reasoning but I assume. But hopefully we'll know really soon and hopefully it won't be because Lady explodes a baby out of herself.
*fingers crossed*

Well, the rescue lady came on Saturday and she couldn't definitively say that Lady is or isn't preggo so ehhhhh.
She felt like, if Lady is pregnant, she's probably at 6-7 months...I'm not sure if I agree but the lady tried to get "the baby" to kick her by really poking and prodding Lady's belly but nothing moved...so maybe she's right? I don't know.

It's been about a bazillion degrees here for the last few days so horse-wise things have been going very sedately along.
Saturday+Sunday, the horses had totally off. I fed them and that was pretty much it.
Yesterday, they both got baths/hosing off. Lacey got a crazy thorough bath (I even washed her face! She hates water to the face but she survived and now her face is clean) and Lady got throughly hosed off. Lady's getting to be an old hat at this bathing/water thing - proud of her!

Then, today Lacey and I went on a trail ride together. We had the best time. She only whinnied twice for Lady when we left and both times they were very half-hearted neighs.
I just love how athletic she is. We even galloped up a hill (something we can't do while ponying Lady because Lady is still opposed to cantering while being ponied) which was great.
I really like my horse.

Then, we came back -after Lacey got hosed off- and discovered that Lady had busted through EVERY section of "electric" tape she could find, trying to find Lacey. >.< That horse, I wanted to punch her. She's fine if there's a human there or if Lacey is there but being alone is the work of the devil. I would figure that by this point, where I've taken Lacey on at least 4-5 rides - just us, she should realize that we are coming back soon. Apparently not.
I'm still super frustrated with her. Running around+calling is one thing but going through fences hurts the fence and could potentially hurt her if she chooses the wrong fence...

Also, I got the, probably made of gold, super expensive pain/inflammation stuff for Lacey yesterday. She got her first dose of "DC-Y" today because the package says that it shouldn't be used with NSAIDs like Bute and I had already given her a little Bute yesterday. We'll see if that does as good/better job than Bute does! Hopefully it'll be less dangergous...

It started out really well though I took the girls on a ride and they went nicely. I even got Lady to walk herself down to the trails by attaching her to Lacey liek I do when I pony her. That way, I only had to worry about leading Lacey which was very ideal (Lacey often lags behind, I assume due to her sight issues - she's trying to stay far enough back that she won't mow me down ever, and Lady likes to keep her head RIGHT AT my shoulder/charge ahead. It makes for some frustrating leading times).
And, since Lady was behind her, Lacey didn't try to bite Lady! She did try once as we were leaving the pasture but I was still holding on to her+I saw it so I was able to really get on her case about it (previously she'd been biting her at times where any correction took place 4-5 seconds later and that's just not effective/a good strategy). After that, we got into a few situations where Lacey could have really easily gone to town on Lady, but she didn't. I know that Lacey is very rule oriented (if a horse could be that way) so maybe she just didn't know that biting is against the rules (has never been an issue before so that's possible) and now that she knows, maybe she'll tone down the tooth talk.... *fingers crossed*

Then, we got home, I stalled them up to feed them, they ate, and Lady decided to free herself by just charging through her "gate" area. >.< Grrrrr.
I then just calmly went to catch her (she wanted to play keep away but I made it totally unfun by just walking her down+caught her pretty easily after the initial "ahhhahahaha!"), caught her, released Lacey, kept her on a short lead rope while I fixed her gate - made sure she was "paying attention" (no eating, no sniffing the ground, no figiting, etc), then once the gate was fixed, she got to stand in her stall, doing nothing, for 5 minutes. After being made to stand with me while I fixed it, she seemed relieved to just get to be in her stall.
Anyway, she stayed in perfectly for that 5 minutes. Once does not a habit make, of course, but it's a start!
I guess making her painfully bored is the key to stopping unwanted behaviors in her case!

Then! This afternoon my friend/mentor called me up (this is the lady who has some sketchy ideas about stuff but mostly her ideas are sound+she means well AND she found me my Lacey girl :) ) to find out if I know about what's going on up at the camp I used to work for. [was an assistant wrangler at that camp for 3 years, head wrangler for the last 2 - basically, the entire horse program at that camp was "mine" during those years]

APPARENTLY, the current HW (a woman who had a horse in the 80's, hasn't been around horses since, you get the drill) is pretty much starving the horses (who aren't owned by the camp, btw - they're from an "outfitter"). She's under the impression that 5lbs of hay/day/horse is ok and if a horse is getting skinny, well, they OBVIOUSLY don't need more hay, THEY NEED GRAIN!!!

What????! Who ARE you, lady? Anyway, the outfitter is having a MAJOR cow and demanding that the camp "hire" (camp is volunteer-basis only) me back for the remaining 4 weeks of camp or they're going to remove their horses. Well, too bad I'm not going back to camp... I'm flattered though! Hahaha

THEN, on top of that, due to what my camp is doing to the outfitter now+what camps have done to the outfitter in the past+the hay economy, the outfitter is selling off ALL their horses.
I don't know whether to be happy or sad. The horses that don't go to private homes have a one way ticket to the Enumclaw auction, which is notorious for slaughter buyers... :( Those horses are my dear friends. I wish I could take all my favorites.
On the plus side, my friend is seriously considering buying up our joint favorite mare. She's this SUPER sassy little brown Quarter Pony mare, has that working QH attitude. All sass and no stop. She's basically the best. She's legitimately my favorite horse ever, after Lacey. At camp, she and Lacey were "my" two. If I wasn't riding one, I was 100% on the other. Her name's Lil Bit (aka, Lil Bit*h, hahahahaha).
So, I'm SO hopeful that my friend will get our/my lil girl and maybe, just maybe, something will work out that way. This friend of mine is into a philosphy where she finds a horse she wants you to have+she likes, she pays expenses on it for a year while you train-etc the horse, then at the end of the year, if you still like the horse, said horse is yours. I do not know at all, but in the face of Lady not really working out great, maybe this is the thing that's meant to be... I have no idea and I'm not getting too excited, but MY LITTLE BIT!!!!
While we were talking, I mentioned to her about Lady and my troubles and how Lacey needed a friend and she started murmuring to herself... We'll see.

Anyway, we agreed that we'd talk in a week, she'd think about this horse situation, I'd try to get a job, the whole deal. Basically, the real deal is that if I had a job, 2 horses would be nothing. As it is, I've been job seeking for over a year with nothing to show for it. I get called for interviews, and then second interviews, but then don't get a call back or get a call that says they "found someone better". Now that I have my AA, I'm hopeful that maybe education-wise I can look cooler than some of the people applying for the jobs I'm interested in. I'm not looking for anything more than entry level but even that seems impossible here... :(

ANYWAY, isn't that exciting??

And, of course, I can't just tell you about "my" Lil Bit without a picture of us, right?
I have even more pictures of Lacey and Lady, as well.

Lil Bit!!
[do not mind that I sorta look like a midgit -not that there's anything wrong with that, of course!- and that I have a super weird look on my face...to this day I have no clue what I was looking at... hahaha]
But yeah, she's basically a beast - like Lacey! I'm 5ft 9 and she's 14.1hh, on a tall day. She's a BEAST. The two of them can even comfortably share saddles, they're built that similarly.

My real horsies!!

I maaaaaay have discovered the "saturation" feature of my photo editor....Maybe.

This morning. The cutest face in the WOOOORRRRLD, maybe.

HerpDerp

Somebody got a new bridle! "Maui Cowgirl" hahahahaha

Again with the saturation button...bright colors=wallaby love

This evening. Found some Queen Anne's Lace looking very lacey. Hahaha
[That was super hard to write lacey without capitalizing...]

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